Dr Jim Watson
Adjunct Associate Professor
School of the Environment
Researcher biography
Dr Jim Watson is Principal Scientist (Remote Sensing) at the New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment, and a member of the Joint Remote Sensing Research Program (https://www.jrsrp.org.au/).
He designs and leads research projects for monitoring native vegetation, with a focus on algorithms for extracting information from satellite datasets and aerial photography.
Jim received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Queensland. He has previously worked on the statistical inference of network interactions at the School of Computing (University of Leeds, United Kingdom), crop-climate modelling at the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science (University of Leeds), and agricultural proximal sensing at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (University of Queensland).
He is a contributing author of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR5), has developed a number of novel feature detection algorithms, and is experienced in high performance computing.
Publications
Book Chapters
Potgieter, Andries B., Watson, James, George-Jaeggli, Barbara, McLean, Gregory, Eldridge, Mark, Chapman, Scott C., Laws, Kenneth, Christopher, Jack, Chenu, Karine, Borrell, Andrew, Hammer, Graeme and Jordan, David R. (2019). The use of hyperspectral proximal sensing for phenotyping of plant breeding trials. Fundamentals, sensor systems, spectral libraries, and data mining for vegetation. (pp. 127-148) edited by Prasad S. Thenkabail, John G. Lyon and Alfredo Huete. Boca Raton FL, USA: CRC Press. doi: 10.1201/9781315164151-5
Porter, John R., Xie, Liyong, Challinor, Andrew J., Cochrane, Kevern, Howden, S. Mark, Iqbal, Muhammad Mohsin, Lobell, David B., Travasso, Maria Isabel, Netra Chhetri, Netra Chhetri, Garrett, Karen, Ingram, John, Lipper, Leslie, McCarthy, Nancy, McGrath, Justin, Smith, Daniel, Thornton, Philip, Watson, James and Ziska, Lewis (2014). Food security and food production systems. Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part A: global and sectoral aspects. (pp. 485-533) edited by Christopher B. Field, Vicente R. Barros, David Jon Dokken, Katharine J. Mach, Michael D. Mastrandrea, T. Eren Bilir, Monalisa Chatterjee, Kristie L. Ebi, Yuka Otsuki Estrada, Robert C. Genova, Betelhem Girma, Eric S. Kissel, Andrew N. Levy, Sandy MacCracken and Patricia R. Mastrandrea. New York, United States: Cambridge University Press.
Watson, J., Hawkins, J., Bradley, D., Dassanayake, D., Wiles, J. and Hanan, J. (2005). Towards a network pattern language for complex systems. Recent Advances In Artificial Life. (pp. 309-317) Shatin, Hong Kong: World Scientific Publishing. doi: 10.1142/9789812701497_0023
Journal Articles
Liedtke, J. D., Hunt, C. H., George-Jaeggli, B., Laws, K., Watson, J., Potgieter, A. B., Cruickshank, A. and Jordan, D. R. (2020). High-throughput phenotyping of dynamic canopy traits associated with stay-green in grain sorghum. Plant Phenomics, 2020 4635153, 1-10. doi: 10.34133/2020/4635153
Guo, Wei, Zheng, Bangyou, Potgieter, Andries B., Diot, Julien, Watanabe, Kakeru, Noshita, Koji, Jordan, David R., Wang, Xuemin, Watson, James, Ninomiya, Seishi and Chapman, Scott C. (2018). Aerial imagery analysis – quantifying appearance and number of sorghum heads for applications in breeding and agronomy. Frontiers in Plant Science, 9 1544, 1544. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2018.01544
Watson, James, Zheng, Bangyou, Chapman, Scott and Chenu, Karine (2017). Projected impact of future climate on water-stress patterns across the Australian wheatbelt. Journal of Experimental Botany, 68 (21-22), 5907-5921. doi: 10.1093/jxb/erx368
Potgieter, Andries B., George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Chapman, Scott C., Laws, Kenneth, Cadavid, Luz A. Suarez, Wixted, Jemima, Watson, James, Eldridge, Mark, Jordan, David R. and Hammer, Graeme L. (2017). Multi-spectral imaging from an unmanned aerial vehicle enables the assessment of seasonal leaf area dynamics of sorghum breeding lines. Frontiers in Plant Science, 8 1532. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2017.01532
Yang, Huiyi, Dobbie, Steven, Ramirez-Villegas, Julian, Feng, Kuishuang, Challinor, Andrew J., Chen, Bing, Gao, Yao, Lee, Lindsay, Yin, Yan, Sun, Laixiang, Watson, James, Koehler, Ann-Kristin, Fan, Tingting and Ghosh, Sat (2016). Potential negative consequences of geoengineering on crop production: a study of Indian groundnut. Geophysical Research Letters, 43 (22), 11786-11795. doi: 10.1002/2016GL071209
Ramirez-Villegas, Julian, Watson, James and Challinor, Andrew J. (2015). Identifying traits for genotypic adaptation using crop models. Journal of Experimental Botany, 66 (12), 3451-3462. doi: 10.1093/jxb/erv014
Watson, James, Challinor, Andrew J., Fricker, Thomas E. and Ferro, Christopher A. T. (2014). Comparing the effects of calibration and climate errors on a statistical crop model and a process-based crop model. Climatic Change, 132 (1), 93-109. doi: 10.1007/s10584-014-1264-3
Wesselink, Anna, Challinor, Andrew Juan, Watson, James, Bevan, Keith, Allen, Icarus, Hanlon, Helen, Lopez, Ana, Otto, Friederike, Morse, Andy, Rye, Cameron, Saux-Picard, Stephane, Stainforth, David and Suckling, Emma (2014). Equipped to deal with uncertainty in climate and impacts predictions: lessons from internal peer review. Climatic Change, 132 (1), 1-14. doi: 10.1007/s10584-014-1213-1
Challinor, A. J., Watson, J., Lobell, D. B., Howden, S. M., Smith, D. R. and Chhetri, N. (2014). A meta-analysis of crop yield under climate change and adaptation. Nature Climate Change, 4 (4), 287-291. doi: 10.1038/nclimate2153
Watson, James and Challinor, Andrew (2013). The relative importance of rainfall, temperature and yield data for a regional-scale crop model. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 170, 47-57. doi: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2012.08.001
Watson, James, Abbass, Hussein A., Lokan, Chris and Lindsay, Peter (2008). Software engineering for artificial life, complex systems, and agent-based distillation. Complexity International, 12, 1-13.
Watson, James, Hanan, Jim and Wiles, Janet (2008). Modeling the fitness of plant morphologies across three levels of complexity. Biosystems, 94 (1-2), 182-190. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2008.05.023
Wiles, Janet, Watson, James, Tonkes, Bradley and Deacon, Terrence (2005). Transient phenomena in learning and evolution: genetic assimilation and genetic redistribution. Artificial Life, 11 (1-2), 177-188. doi: 10.1162/1064546053279026
Watson, James, Geard, Nicholas and Wiles, Janet (2004). Towards More Biological Mutation Operators in Gene Regulation Studies. BioSystems, 76 (1-3), 239-248. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2004.05.016
Conference Papers
Das, Sumanta, Massey-Reed, Sean Reynolds, Mahuika, Jenny, Watson, James, Cordova, Celso, Otto, Loren, Zhao, Yan, Chapman, Scott, George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Jordan, David, Hammer, Graeme L. and Potgieter, Andries B. (2022). A high-throughput phenotyping pipeline for rapid evaluation of morphological and physiological crop traits across large fields. IGARSS 2022 - 2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 17-22 July 2022. Piscataway, NJ, United States: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . doi: 10.1109/IGARSS46834.2022.9884530
George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Zhi, Xiaoyue, Wu, Alex, Potgieter, Andries, Reynolds Massey-Reed, Sean, Watson, James, Hunt, Colleen, Lamprecht, Marnie, Chapman, Scott, Borrell, Andrew, Jordan, David and Hammer, Graeme (2019). Seeing canopy photosynthesis through the eyes of a Gecko. Innovations in Agriculture for Food Security, Brisbane, QLD Australia, 30 June - 3 July 2019.
George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Potgieter, Andries, Zhi, Xiaoyu, Reynolds Massey-Reed, Sean, Watson, James, Lamprecht, Marnie, Chapman, Scott, Laws, Kenneth, Hunt, Colleen, Borrell, Andrew, Jordan, David, van Oosterom, Erik, Wu, Alex and Hammer, Graeme (2019). High-throughput phenotyping tools to test whether leaf-level photosynthesis traits are measurable at the crop level. TropAg 2019, Brisbane, QLD Australia, 10-13 November 2019.
Potgieter, Andries, Laws, Kenneth, George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Hunt, Colleen, Guo, Wei, Watson, James, Reynolds Massey-Reed, Sean, Chapman, Scott, Hammer, Graeme and Jordan, David (2019). Determining of targeted crop characteristics utilising sensing technologies to enhance selection of higher yielding varieties in sorghum breeding trials. Australian Summer Grains Conference, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia, 8-10 July 2019.
Chenu, Karine, Ababaei, Behnam, Watson, James and Chapman, Scott (2019). Genotype and management adaptation of wheat to heat and drought in current and future climates. International Tropical Agriculture Conference (TropAg2019), Brisbane, QLD Australia, 11-13 November 2019.
George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Potgieter, Andries, Zhi, Xiaoyu, Reynolds Massey-Reed, Sean, Watson, James, Lamprecht, Marnie, Chapman, Scott, Laws, Kenneth, Hunt, Colleen, Borrell, Andrew, Jordan, David, van Oosterom, Erik, Wu, Alex and Hammer, Graeme (2019). High-throughput phenotyping of canopy radiation use efficiency and its component traits. 6th International Plant Phenotyping Symposium, Nanjing, China, 22-26 October 2019.
George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Potgieter, Andries, James, Watson, Chapman, Scott, Zheng, Bangyou, Eldridge, Mark, Laws, Kenneth, Mace, Emma, Hunt, Colleen, Hathorn, Adrian, Borrell, Andrew, Hammer, Graeme and Jordan, David (2018). Trial results - Tactical agronomy for sorghum and maize and agronomy for high yielding sorghum and wheat in the northern region. 2nd Asia-Pacific Plant Phenotyping Conference, Nanjing, China, 23- 25 March 2018.
George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Watson, James and Potgieter, Andries (2018). An integrated sensing platform to map the genetic loci associated with canopy radiation use efficiency in sorghum. Combio, Sydney, Australia, 23-26 September 2018.
Potgieter, Andries B., Watson, James, Eldridge, Mark, Laws, Kenneth, George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Hunt, Colleen, Borrell, Andrew, Mace, Emma, Chapman, Scott C., Jordan, David R. and Hammer, Graeme L. (2018). Determining crop growth dynamics in sorghum breeding trials through remote and proximal sensing technologies. 38th IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Valencia, Spain, Jul 22-27, 2018. NEW YORK: IEEE. doi: 10.1109/IGARSS.2018.8519296
George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Watson, James and Potgieter, Andries (2018). An integrated sensing approach to map the genetic loci associated with canopy radiation use efficiency in sorghum. 5th International Plant Phenotyping Symposium, Adelaide, Australia, 2-5 October 2018.
Potgieter, Andries, Watson, James, Eldridge, Mark, Laws, Kenneth, George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Hunt, Colleen, Chapman, Scott, Jordan, David and Hammer, Graeme (2018). Field phenotyping of sorghum breeding trials through proximal sensing technologies. Sorghum in the 21st Century, Cape Town, South Africa, 9-12 April 2018.
Watson, James , Potgieter, Andries , George-Jaeggli, Barbara , Laws, Kenneth , Eldridge, Mark , Hammer, Graeme and Jordan, David (2017). Taking cover: an assessment of the performance of sensor hardware and algorithms for estimating sorghum cover. TropAG 2017, Brisbane, Australia, 20-22 November 2017.
Watson, James, Potgieter, Andrew, Laws, Ken, George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Eldridge, Mark, Hammer, Graeme and Jordan, David (2017). Field phenotyping for photosynthetic traits in sorghum.Taking cover: an assessment of the performance of narrowband and wideband spectral sensors for estimating sorghum cover. TropAg2017, Brisbane, Australia, 20-22 November 2017.
George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Potgieter, Andries, Chapman, Scott, Laws, Kenneth, Watson, James, Eldridge, Mark, van Oosterom, Erik, Geetika, Geetika, Mace, Emma, Hathorn, Adrian, Hunt, Collen, Borrell, Andrew, von Caemmerer, Susanne, Hammer, Graeme and Jordan, David (2017). High-throughput phenotyping and genotyping of variation in photosynthesis traits for increased crop yields. Chloroplast Metabolism and Photosynthesis Symposium, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 26-28 July 2017.
George-Jaeggli, Barbara, Potgieter, Andries, Chapman, Scott, Watson, James, Eldridge, Mark, Laws, Ken, George, Peter, Borrell, Andrew, Hammer, Graeme and Jordan, David (2017). Field phenotyping for photosynthetic traits in sorghum. TropAg2017, Convention and exhibition centre, Brisbane, QLD, Australia, 20-22 November 2017.
Watson, James, Potgieter, Andries, Holland, Edward, Jordan, David and Hammer, Graeme (2016). The design and implementation of a high-throughput data pipeline for an agricultural proximal sensing platform. eResearch 2016, Melbourne, 10-14 October, 2016.
Potgieter, Andries, Watson, James, Jordan, David, Hammer, Graeme, Chapman, Scott, Laws, Kenneth, McLean, Greg, Barbara George-Jaeggli, Holland, Edward and Eldridge, Mark (2016). Field phenotyping of sorghum breeding plots through proximal sensing. 5th International Controlled Environment Conference (AusPheno 2016), ANU, 18-23 September, 2016.
Chenu, K., Zheng, B., Watson, J., Lobell, D. and Chapman, S. (2016). Heat, frost and drought – what are the trends?. International Crop Modelling Symposium, Berlin, Germany, 15-17 March 2016.
Watson, James, Zheng, Bangyou, Chapman, Scott C. and Chenu, Karine (2015). Projected impact of future climate on drought patterns in complex rainfed environments. Agriculture and Climate Change: Adapting Crops to Increased Uncertainty, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 15-17 February 2015.
Watson, James, Zheng, Bangyou, Chapman, Scott C. and Chenu, Karine (2015). Projected impact of future climate on drought patterns in complex rainfed environments. Agriculture and Climate Change - Adapting Crops to Increased Uncertainty (AGRI 2015), Amsterdam, Netherlands, 15-17 February 2015. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier. doi: 10.1016/j.proenv.2015.07.255
Watson, James, Zheng, Bangyou, Chapman, Scott C. and Chenu, Karine (2015). Impact of projected climates on drought occurrence in the Australian wheatbelt. 17th Australian Agronomy Conference, Hobart, Australia, 20-24 September 2015. Warragul, VIC Australia: Australian Society of Agronomy.
Challinor, Andy, Watson, James, Lobell, David, Howden, Mark and Vermeulen, Sonja (2014). How have uncertainties in projected yields changed between AR4 and AR5?. CropM International Symposium and Workshop, Oslo, Norway, 10-12 February 2014. Oslo, Norway: FACCE MACSUR.
Koehler, Ann-Kristin, Challinor, Andrew and Watson, James (2014). Exploring synergies in field, regional and global yield impact studies. CropM International Symposium and Workshop, Oslo, Norway, 10-12 February 2014. Oslo, Norway: FACCE MACSUR.
Watson, James and Challinor, Andrew (2014). Measuring the impact of climate and yield data errors on regional scale crop models. CropM International Symposium and Workshop, Oslo, Norway, 10-12 February 2014. Oslo, Norway: FACCE MACSUR.
Watson, James and Challinor, Andrew (2013). Towards metrics for using process-based and statistical models to project regional-scale crop responses to climate. European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2013, Vienna, Austria, 7-12 April 2013.
Challinor, Andrew, Hawkins, Ed and Watson, James (2011). Towards improved crop-climate projections: the role of calibration and weather data. American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, San Francicso, CA, United States, 5-9 December 2011.
Watson, James and Challinor, Andrew (2011). Quantifying the impact of input data uncertainties in regional scale crop-climate modeling. American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting 2011, San Francisco, CA, USA, 5-9 December, 2011.
Watson, J., Maetschke, S. and Wiles, J. (2007). Dsweep: A lightweight tool for distributed parameter sweeps. Seventh International Workshop on Information Processing in Cells and Tissues (IPCAT 2007), Oxford, United Kingdom, 29-31 August 2007. Brno, Czech Republic: Tribun EU.
Watson, James and Wiles, Janet (2007). Interactively exploring distributed computational models of biology. Complex 07: 8th Asia-Pacific Complex Systems Conference, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia, 2-5 July, 2007. Canberra, ACT, Australia: COSNet.
Watson, James, Wakabayashi, Mark, Moore, Jared, Sanin Montoya, Andres, Willadsen, Kai, Geard, Nic, Bradley, Daniel and Wiles, Janet (2007). Computational techniques for modeling complex biological systems. Complex 07: 8th Asia-Pacific Complex Systems Conference, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia, 2-5 July, 2007. Canberra, ACT, Australia: COSNet.
Watson, J. R., Hawkins, J. C., Bradley, D. R., Dassanayake, D., Wiles, J. H. and Hanan, J. S. (2005). Towards a network pattern language for complex systems. Australian Conference on Artificial Life (ACAL'05), Sydney, Australia, 5-9 December 2005. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.
Wiles, Janet and Watson, James (2005). Patterns in complex systems modeling. Sixth International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning (IDEAL 2005), Brisbane, Australia, 6-8 July 2005. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag. doi: 10.1007/11508069_69
Wiles, Janet, Geard, Nicholas L., Watson, James, Willadsen, Kai, Mattick, John, Bradley, Daniel and Hallinan, Jennifer (2005). There's more to a model than code: understanding and formalizing in silico modeling experience. GECCO'05: The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2005, Washington, DC, USA, 25-29 June, 2005. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/1102256.1102318
Watson, J. R., Abbass, H., Lokan, C. and Lindsay, P. A. (2004). Software engineering for artificial life, complex systems, and agent-based distillation. The Seventh Asia-Pacific Conference on Complex Systems, Cairns, 6-10 December, 2004. Rockhampton: Central Queensland University.
Watson, James, Wiles, Janet and Hanan, Jim (2003). Towards More Relevant Evolutionary Models: Integrating an Artificial Genome With a Developmental Phenotype. The 1st Australian Conference on Artificial Life (ACAL 2003), Canberra, Australia, 6-7 December, 2003. Canberra, Australia: The University of New South Wales.
Wiles, Janet, Watson, James, Tonkes, Bradley and Deacon, Terrence (2002). Evolving Complex Integrated Behaviour by Masking and Unmasking Selection Pressures. International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS2002), Nashua, NH, United States, 9-14 June 2002.
Watson, James and Wiles, Janet (2002). The rise and fall of learning: a neural network model of the genetic assimilation of acquired traits. The 2002 Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2002), Hawaii, United States, 12-17 May 2002. New York City, United States: IEEE. doi: 10.1109/CEC.2002.1006994
Watson, James, Geard, Nicholas and Wiles, Janet H. (2002). Stability and Task Complexity: A Neural Network Model of Evolution and Learning. The 8th International Conference on Artificial Life (Artificial Life VIII), Sydney, Australia, 9-13 December, 2002. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Watson, J. R. and Wiles, J. H. (2002). The rise and fall of learning: A neural network model of the genetic assimilation of aquired traits. 2002 Congress on Evolutionary Computation, Hawaii, 12-17 May, 2002. Piscataway, NJ: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Wiles, J. H., Tonkes, B. and Watson, J. R. (2001). How learning can guide evolution in hierarchical modular tasks. Twenty-Third Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1-4 August, 2001. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Department Technical Report
Watson, James and Wiles, Janet (2007). QCIF report: an on-site survey of high performance computing. Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation.
Thesis
Watson, James Robert (2006). From genotypes to phenotypes and back again : modeling the interaction between individual behaviour and evolution. PhD Thesis, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland. doi: 10.14264/158254